The Torch, newspaper of the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM), published weekly in English between 1946 and 1960. The NEUM was established in South Africa in 1943. The NEUM challenged a divide and conquer approach that came to define apartheid, it was a progressive anti-Stalinist socialist movement.

Scientific concepts were engaged with in the Fireside Science/ Science and the People columns in The Torch. The relationship between the public and science is often discussed in relation to contestation between religious groups and scientists. However, the relationship between scientists and the public is often more complicated, especially in regions where science has produced dehumanising representations. Despite colonial and extractive scientific practices, the NEUM, engaged with science. In the case of Africa, it was paleoanthropology that cemented the African origins of modern humans. Thus, paleoanthropology as a discipline established a long history of human development in Africa, repudiating the commonly held belief that Europe and Asia were default sites of human origin. This history results in a very different relationship between science and society. Science is colonial, extractive, and, at the same time, redemptive.